Kevin Maguire perfectly explained how migrants arriving in the UK on small boats are ‘demonised’ by the right.
The Mirror journalist was appearing on this week’s edition of Question Time alongside Labour minister Jake Richards, Tory shadow minister Harriet Cross, the Lib Dems’ Max Wilkinson and Telegraph writer Annabel Dunham.
As it usually does on the BBC programme, the issue of small boat crossings and illegal immigration came up, when the panel were asked “when will the small boats crisis end?”
Maguire decided to deliver some truths about the issue and call out the “demonisation” and “scaremongering” that often happens when the topic is discussed.
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He explained that many of those arriving in the UK are “fleeing terror” and are coming to the UK “because they’ve got family members here.”
“And their family members are here because we went there back in the day,” he continued.
“As a result a lot of them, not all, but a lot of them speak English and that’s a big pull.”
Maguire also highlighted how Britain’s deregulated labour market made it easier for those arriving in the country to find work.
But, addressing complaints from some in the audience that migrants arrive in the UK and don’t work, Maguire argued that as a country “we do not let asylum seekers work so we have to put them up [in hotels].”
“They get £10 a day if you’re in a hotel and it’s normally a grotty hotel. They’re being shut now and moved into houses of multiple occupation, which I know creates its own issues but lets not demonise and scaremonger about them all.”
Acknowledging that small boat crossings are an issue that needs to be tackled, he said the topic had now got “disproportionate attention.”
“Every time somebody who’s black or brown commits a crime, it gets huge coverage. Somebody white does it and it doesn’t get the same coverage,” he added.
Sharing his comments on X, many praised Maguire.